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Migrants
: Frontex signale un trafic de faux passeports syriens
Fabrice Leggeri, patron de
l'agence européenne de surveillance des frontières, affirme qu'un
trafic de faux passeports syriens a vu le jour, notamment en Turquie.
Publié à 11h02, le 01
septembre 2015, Modifié à 14h48, le 01 septembre 2015 /
http://www.europe1.fr/international/migrants-frontex-signale-un-trafic-de-faux-passeports-syriens-2508147
INTERVIEW - Alors
que les Syriens sont nombreux à demander l'asile en Europe, un
trafic de faux passeports syriens s'est instauré, notamment en
Turquie, a déclaré mardi Fabrice Leggeri, le patron de l'agence
européenne de surveillance des frontières Frontex invité sur
Europe 1 mardi. L'objectif ? Faciliter l'entrée dans l'Union
européenne (UE) des immigrants.
Être "vigilant"
par rapport à de possibles terroristes. "Il y a des personnes
qui aujourd'hui sont en Turquie, achètent des faux passeports
syriens parce qu'elles ont évidemment compris qu'il y a un effet
d'aubaine puisque les Syriens obtiennent le droit d'asile dans tous
les Etats membres de l'Union européenne", a-t-il indiqué. "Les
personnes qui utilisent les faux passeports syriens souvent
s'expriment en langue arabe. Elles peuvent être originaires
d'Afrique du Nord, du Proche-Orient mais elles ont plutôt un profil
de migrant économique", a ajouté Fabrice Leggeri.
Ce trafic ne semble
pas peser pour l'heure sur la sécurité dans l'UE. "Aujourd'hui
on n'a pas d'élément objectif pour dire que des terroristes
potentiels sont entrés en Europe comme cela", a-t-il noté,
tout en appelant à rester "vigilant à toutes nos frontières".
Des systèmes
d'enregistrement "saturés". Le patron de Frontex a réitéré
son appel à l'envoi de gardes-frontières supplémentaires de pays
de l'UE en Grèce afin de permettre l'enregistrement de tous les
migrants se présentant dans ce pays, aux frontières extérieures de
Schengen. "Face à l'afflux, il y a une saturation des systèmes
d'enregistrement donc tous les migrants ne sont pas enregistrés. On
a une idée des nationalités (...) mais pas de vision complète sur
qui entre et qui sont vraiment les profils de tous ces migrants",
a-t-il noté.
Gérer les
frontières de manière "solidaire". Fabrice Leggeri a par
ailleurs abondé dans le sens de la chancelière allemande Angela
Merkel qui a mis en garde lundi contre une remise en cause de
l'espace Schengen si les migrants affluant en Europe ne sont pas
équitablement répartis entre les Etats membres de l'UE. "C'est
un risque que l'on commence à sentir tous les jours. On voit se
multiplier des patrouilles policières le long des frontières
intérieures (entre Etats membres de l'espace Schengen)", a
souligné le patron de Frontex. "Si les frontières extérieures
ne peuvent pas être gérées de façon solidaire entre les Etats
membres, il y a un risque que chaque Etat reprenne le contrôle de
ses frontières nationales, ce qui ne sera pas plus efficace",
a-t-il estimé.
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‘You Syrians are
always lucky. Everybody likes you.…You can go wherever you want.’
—Young Afghan man
at a refugee shelter in Nickelsdorf, Austria
“We have to say we
are Syrians,” he said with a smile, minutes after he crossed into
Macedonia. “We can’t risk being sent back to Iraq.”
—Ali, a
25-year-old teacher from Mosul, Iraq
‘Three-quarters of
the people coming to Europe are not fleeing any war. It’s one thing
to host refugees and another to fill up the country with illegal
migrants.’
—Matteo Salvini,
leader of the Italian conservative party Northern League
–-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Migrants Pose as
Syrians to Open Door to Asylum in Europe
People from other
Middle East and North African countries try to better their odds for
staying by passing as refugees from civil war
By MANUELA MESCO in
Kos, Greece,
MATT BRADLEY in
Budapest and GIOVANNI LEGORANO in Gevgelija, Macedonia
Updated Sept. 12,
2015 5:55 a.m. ET /
http://www.wsj.com/articles/migrants-pose-as-syrians-to-open-door-to-asylum-in-europe-1442013612?mod=e2fb
At Budapest’s
Keleti Train Station last week, Mahmoud, a Syrian from Aleppo, looked
around the underground concourse packed with new arrivals like
himself. Judging from their accents and dialects, he reckoned that
little more than 10% of them were Syrian. But he saw many more
passing themselves off as Syrians.
Indeed, during his
journey through Greece and the Balkans on his way to Hungary, “I
found a bunch of Iraqis buying fake Syrian passports,” said
Mahmoud, adding that now Syrians “are worried that their passports
are being stolen.” Nearby, a countryman furtively showed his
passport, tucked between the sole and padding of one of his sneakers.
As Europe moves to
take in large numbers of refugees, particularly from Syria, some
other migrants—often Iraqis, Libyans, Palestinians and
Egyptians—are attempting to pass themselves off as Syrian, said aid
workers, government officials and fellow migrants.
The trend is causing
tensions between Syrians and migrants of other nationalities, as well
as headaches for officials sifting through huge numbers of applicants
to root out impostors.
The masquerade also
risks undermining political support for the European Union’s
open-door policy, with anti-immigrant parties in many countries ready
to denounce the presence of economic migrants amid the wave of
refugees. Of the 381,000 people who have landed in Italy and Greece
this year—the two main entry points of the current wave of
migrants—50% are Syrian, according to the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees.
Because of the war
in their country, Syrians are considered prima facie refugees under
international law, meaning they don’t need to present further
evidence to qualify for protected status. And in recent weeks, the
deaths of 71 migrants—some of whom were Syrians—in a Hungarian
truck found in Austria, and particularly images of the body of a
3-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach, have generated a
wave of goodwill toward them. As a result, Syrians enjoy markedly
better treatment than others along their journey.
This summer,
authorities on the Greek island of Kos offered Syrians shelter and
food in a local stadium, leaving others to sleep outside without
sustenance. A special ferry was even dispatched to host the Syrians
and process their applications more quickly.
“Refugees are from
Syria,” Zacharoula Tsirigoti, head of Greece’s border protection
said in August. “The others are immigrants.”
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel warned that Germany won’t absorb the thousands of
economic migrants who are mixed among the 800,000 migrants expected
to apply for asylum this year. “Those with no prospect of staying
must leave our country,” she said.
When European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker presented a proposal on
Wednesday for redistributing 160,000 refugees throughout the
continent, he also underscored plans for a fast-track process to
repatriate thousands of people from the Balkans whose asylum claims
have already been turned down but who never went home.
This month, EU
border-control agency Frontex reported an increase in the trafficking
of fake Syrian passports, a strange reversal for a document
considered virtually useless until recently. Last week, German
officials intercepted several packages containing Syrian
passports—both real and fake ones—making their way to Germany.
“There are people
who buy fake Syrian passports in Turkey,” Fabrice Leggeri, head of
Frontex, told French radio Europe 1. “Those people who pass
themselves off as Syrian are Arabic speakers, and many come from
North Africa or elsewhere in the Middle East. They tend to have the
profile of economic migrants.”
The differential
treatment is causing friction among the many nationalities in the
wave of migrants sweeping Europe. “You Syrians are always lucky,”
a young Afghan man said to a nearby group of Syrians at a refugee
shelter in Nickelsdorf, Austria. “Everybody likes you.…You can go
wherever you want.”
Other migrants
passing themselves off as Syrians memorize street maps of Damascus
and Aleppo to prepare for authorities’ questions about
neighborhoods they falsely claim as their own. (Similarly, some
Africans claim to be Eritreans, who also enjoy prima facie asylum
protection under international law. And young, legal-age migrants
claim to be minors, who enjoy special protection regardless of
nationality.)
In August, when
Macedonia gave preference to Syrians as it let a trickle of migrants
cross over from Greece, Ali, a 25-year-old Iraqi teacher from Mosul,
claimed he and his girlfriend were Syrian. The ruse worked.
Authorities seek to
root out impostors during the asylum application process. In Italy,
when a migrant arrives, if he or she lacks a document with proof of
nationality, police use interpreters to secure basic information. The
interpreters are often able to quickly spot those who lie by the
language or dialect they speak, UNHCR officials said.
A committee made up
of officials from the UNHCR, the interior ministry and local
government then conduct more interviews to help decide on an asylum
request. They ask for details of their home country and the situation
that has caused them to flee, checking the responses against
information the committee has about those areas.
But the huge number
of applicants—the EU has seen one million since January 2014—makes
the checks particularly cumbersome.
Stella Nanou,
spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Greece, says it doesn’t have any data
on how big the phenomenon of impostors is, but says the huge numbers
of arrivals mean it is inevitable.
The extra time it
would take to probe the migrants’ stories on arrival in Greece is a
luxury the police can’t afford, she said. A UNHCR spokesman in
Germany said the agency has detected a handful of cases of
non-Syrians trying to pass as Syrian.
In the past year,
Germany has shortened the process of reviewing asylum claims. If an
asylum seeker lacks documents to prove his nationality and
authorities have doubts about it, officials record the applicant’s
speech and have it tested by language experts, said a spokesman for
the German office for migration and refugees.
The impostor problem
could undermine support for migrants and refugees, including Syrians,
in the long term. Anti-immigrant groups already denounce the arrival
of many economic migrants—those fleeing poverty, but not war or
persecution—among the mass arrivals. The distinction touches a
chord in European countries where sluggish economies have left locals
sensitive about the arrivals of newcomers seeking jobs or welfare
support.
“Three-quarters of
the people coming to Europe are not fleeing any war,” said Matteo
Salvini, leader of the Italian conservative party Northern League on
Sept. 9. “It’s one thing to host refugees and another to fill up
the country with illegal migrants.”
—Ruth Bender in
Berlin and Ellen Emmerentze Jervell in Nickelsdorf, Austria
contributed to this article.
Write to Manuela
Mesco at manuela.mesco@wsj.com, Matt Bradley at matt.bradley@wsj.com
and Giovanni Legorano at giovanni.legorano@wsj.com
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